Senior Product Manager, Microsoft

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What happens when a users profile is deleted in SPS.

Typically there is no real impact in the event a user profile is removed from the SharePoint profiles database; the profile will be restored during a full or incremental import. Though the statement is true for the most part when only considering Windows SharePoint Services sites, the behavior varies considerable when including My Site sites in the scenario. Since Windows SharePoint Services content is stored as a table in the sites database, the content can be easily recovered and archived; however, though My Site/Personal site content is similar in this respect many of the end-user facing customization exists as a shared service within SharePoint Portal Server. This content can include, but is not limited to, ‘My Links, My Alerts, etc’. Recovery of the shared services content is more detailed and will require a backup of the profile, sites and services databases to successfully restore the end-users My Site/Personal site to the condition it existed in prior to their profile being removed. The solution includes scheduling an AD import to recreate the missing user profile, recreating the users My Site/Personal site and restoring the contents from the sites database to this site, this will include documents, lists, images, etc. The shared services content can be restored by first learning what content the user had prior to the deletion; this can be achieved from associating the deleted site and user profile in the profile, sites and services backup databases, once determined, the shared services content can be mapped to the new user profile and site.